Player knowledge

[Nick]

New builds up - Windows and OS X.

Fixed:

• Bonuses on egos not showing
• Mapping erasing grid and trap knowledge
• Unknown treasure in the object list

Possibly fixed:

• Ignored items giving a "roll beneath your feet" message
• A variety of crash bugs, due broadly to poor object management. With luck burned objects no longer appear, at least.

Not fixed:

• Items dropped by monsters beneath the player being autoinscribed

I'm not at all confident of no crashes (or their bedfellows, corrupted savefiles), but at least the flood has reduced to a trickle.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Thanks again for the invaluable work you're doing here. This branch is now massively more robust than when I first posted the object changes, and it would have taken so much longer with just me testing it.

It truly is my pleasure. Since I don't know programming, well, apart from what I learned for electrical engineering 30 years ago before changing my major. Did get a minor in EE though. I'm grateful for the opportunity to contribute.

[Nick]

I now have fixes in development for the digging info not showing, mapping erasing grid knowledge, and unknown treasure in the object list. The inscription one I have noted but not looked at yet.

another good example for the slowness, Let a half-troll warrior dig through rubble and watch the counter slowly tick down.

As in the 4.0.4 bugs thread, I think this is a general problem, probably chiefly with the object list. At some point I'm going to do a serious optimisation effort.

not so sure knowledge for traps is working correctly. @ uses a rod of trap detection, which does detect traps, but also is seeing traps appear as they come into LoS that weren’t depicted before. @ didn’t detect traps again and they aren’t adjacent, so didn’t find traps newly created. They just appear. E.g, strength loss darts, dexterity loss darts, summon runes, acid traps have all appeared when @ enters LoS. Shouldn’t they be shown on the map once @ has detected traps in the area?

Bug, source found, should be easy to fix.

Scrolls within sight of @ are burned up by a dragon bat, but the “?” symbol still remains in LoS until @ actually walks over the square.

OK, noted. This is likely related to some other outstanding issues.

Steel Helm of Intelligence with NO intelligence bonus? Savefile attached so you can see this last one in @'s equipment.

I've seen one like this too (Boots of Stealth in my case). It should be fixed by the same thing that fixes the absence of digging info on weapons.

One possibility occurs to me regarding the "rolls under foot" bug. I don't recall whether I toggled off the ignore to check if an ignored item had "rolled under foot". My feeling is that ignored items should not generate the "rolls under foot" message.

Yes, since last posting I have definitely had a case of an ignored item generating the message. Should be easily fixed.

Okay, well, I'd found an instance of the item burned, but still shown bug. Something breathed fire and a Locust Staff under @ burned up, but was still visible with the 'l'ook command.

What do I do? I save the file, exit Angband, zip the savefile, and prepare to upload it. Forgot what creature breathed fire, so went to reopen the file to check the messages.... File won't open. So, a CRASH in another form.

This is a very annoying bug, which I have been trying to fix for a bit now. Currently my attempted fix, seems to make it worse

I will post updated builds once I get all current bugs fixed, but am not sure when that will be. Thanks again for the invaluable work you're doing here. This branch is now massively more robust than when I first posted the object changes, and it would have taken so much longer with just me testing it.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Okay, well, I'd found an instance of the item burned, but still shown bug. Something breathed fire and a Locust Staff under @ burned up, but was still visible with the 'l'ook command.

What do I do? I save the file, exit Angband, zip the savefile, and prepare to upload it. Forgot what creature breathed fire, so went to reopen the file to check the messages.... File won't open. So, a CRASH in another form.

Blind_Bat.zip

[Ingwe Ingweron]

One possibility occurs to me regarding the "rolls under foot" bug. I don't recall whether I toggled off the ignore to check if an ignored item had "rolled under foot". My feeling is that ignored items should not generate the "rolls under foot" message.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

No reproduction of the "rolls under foot" bug. Possibly it was only that DL, since there were what, three iterations of changes on that one level alone?

Have found a few minor bugs in the interim.

- another good example for the slowness, Let a half-troll warrior dig through rubble and watch the counter slowly tick down.

- not so sure knowledge for traps is working correctly. @ uses a rod of trap detection, which does detect traps, but also is seeing traps appear as they come into LoS that weren’t depicted before. @ didn’t detect traps again and they aren’t adjacent, so didn’t find traps newly created. They just appear. E.g, strength loss darts, dexterity loss darts, summon runes, acid traps have all appeared when @ enters LoS. Shouldn’t they be shown on the map once @ has detected traps in the area?

- Scrolls within sight of @ are burned up by a dragon bat, but the “?” symbol still remains in LoS until @ actually walks over the square.

- Steel Helm of Intelligence with NO intelligence bonus? Savefile attached so you can see this last one in @'s equipment. Blind_Bat.zip

Will continue to proceed apace.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I'm still having trouble getting the "roll beneath your feet" message when nothing does - if you happen to have a savefile where it's replicable, that would be handy.

May be able to play some tonight. If I run across a battle that looks promising, I'll save after each round until I can get a replicable "roll beneath your feet" error for you.

[Nick]

Stability greatly improved. Blind-Bat II made it to DL33 without crashing.

Excellent - I was hoping the combination of the continual bugfixes and a new character would improve things. I'll follow up on the bugs.

I'm still having trouble getting the "roll beneath your feet" message when nothing does - if you happen to have a savefile where it's replicable, that would be handy.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Stability greatly improved. Blind-Bat II made it to DL33 without crashing. A few additional bugs noticed along the way:

1. Dagger in start kit doesn’t have digging information

2. Reading a ?Magic Mapping causes all squares previously visited within the mapping range to darken. (Not that, say, a lighted room goes dark, but that the map makes it appear these squares were never visited.) Is this intended?

3. On the treasure sub window coins/gems are being shown as grey items with an orange asterisk. Only objects appeared in the window previously. The unknown coins/gems instantly disappear from the sub window when in LoS. Since treasure detection already distinguishes between coin/gem treasure versus objects, why the change to include coins/gems as unknown objects in the sub window? It makes the window a lot more busy. Plus, since it disappears from the subwindow once in LoS, much the same as an ignored object, even when monies aren't ignored, the treatment isn't the same.

4. Sometimes items are still inscribing on walkover, but not always. I think it has to do with the item being dropped by monster rather than just found, but it doesn’t happen every time, so it remains mysterious. Example: “You have slain the Ogre mage.” Ogre mage drops MB4. “You feel something roll beneath your feet.” (nothing is underfoot, but you see the book next to @) walk over the book. “You have no room for Book of Magic Spells [Sorcery and Evocations] {@m4@b4@G4!k}.” Autoinscribed on walkover. However, find MB4 just laying around, no auto inscribe on walkover.

[Nick]

Latest Windows and OS X builds have fixed the quickstart bug, reverted autoinscribe to on pickup, and fixed a bug where brands and slays were continually rediscovered.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

OK - this is probably the result of more processing having to happen now at each grid to check for changes. The usual rule is get it actually working and then optimise, so remind me about this later.

Will do, but perhaps it's helpful for you to know that this occurred with the changes in this last iteration when you go to track down optimization?

Are you sure? That message should only happen when an object is properly settled on the ground on a grid where the player is, so that's puzzling. That's not to say it isn't happening

Absolutely positive. It's quite observable. E.g., fire missiles at a monster north of the @ and get the message about something rolling under foot. Look, and nothing is there (and it didn't just automatically go back into inventory, either). Another example, kill a monster north of @ and get the message about something rolling underfoot. See an object appear in an adjacent square, but nothing is under @.

OK - for some reason I decided to fix autoinscriptions by making them happen on walkover. I'll change that to on pickup.

Thanks, Nick. There may be arguments for having it on walkover, but for me the prior way of on pickup works better.

The crash on quickstart bug was depressingly simple. New builds should happen some time in the next day or so.

Looks like an Angband weekend! Wait... oh, no! What have I done? Damn! There I go now, tempting the Gods....

[Nick]

1. On screen speed of movement, missiles, beam or bolts, lighting rooms, etc., is slowed down quite a bit in this latest iteration. E.g., use the Phial and you can watch the light slowly spread through the room.

OK - this is probably the result of more processing having to happen now at each grid to check for changes. The usual rule is get it actually working and then optimise, so remind me about this later.

2. Often now the message “You feel something roll beneath your feet” has the item actually in an adjacent space, not under @.

Are you sure? That message should only happen when an object is properly settled on the ground on a grid where the player is, so that's puzzling. That's not to say it isn't happening

3. Auto-inscription is occurring immediately upon @ walking over object, rather than on picking it up. Is this desired behavior? And a related issue, it used to be if @ dropped an item, or was standing on an item, and set up an auto-inscription then picked the item up, it would be inscribed. This is no longer the case. Now @ must move off the space and back to it, upon which the item is inscribed before picking it up. It will not be inscribed if @ simply picks up the item. I sort of prefer items not being inscribed until @ picks them up.

OK - for some reason I decided to fix autoinscriptions by making them happen on walkover. I'll change that to on pickup.

The crash on quickstart bug was depressingly simple. New builds should happen some time in the next day or so.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Well... maybe I won't be starting a new @, yet. On the birth screen, start a new character based on the previous one... "Y" --- CRASH

(So, indeed the newest iteration does have a replicable crash. Blind_Bat.zip

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Blind-Bat died, so I have to start a new @. Nonetheless, the newest version still had crashes during melee, but they weren't easily replicable, so no savefile yet.

Did find some other bugs/questions on the way to this @'s death that weren't crash bugs.

1. On screen speed of movement, missiles, beam or bolts, lighting rooms, etc., is slowed down quite a bit in this latest iteration. E.g., use the Phial and you can watch the light slowly spread through the room.

2. Often now the message “You feel something roll beneath your feet” has the item actually in an adjacent space, not under @.

3. Auto-inscription is occurring immediately upon @ walking over object, rather than on picking it up. Is this desired behavior? And a related issue, it used to be if @ dropped an item, or was standing on an item, and set up an auto-inscription then picked the item up, it would be inscribed. This is no longer the case. Now @ must move off the space and back to it, upon which the item is inscribed before picking it up. It will not be inscribed if @ simply picks up the item. I sort of prefer items not being inscribed until @ picks them up.

[Nick]

And we have updated Windows and OS X builds.